Not the end of the story
by Pegship
Summary: In the face of his impending death, Castle tries to piece together the story of LokSat and prays that he gets a chance to tell it to someone - preferably Kate. One way that the LokSat investigation might play out, entirely in my own imagination. Spoilery for season 8.
_**A/N:**_ _One way that the LokSat investigation might play out, entirely in my own imaginings._

* * *

Richard Castle returned to consciousness, and to the inevitability of his own death. At the hands of *minions*, for Pete's sake.

"Minions," he mumbled, as loudly as he could around his swollen lip. "Murdered by minions. Don't I get to die at the hands of the top dog? At least gimme that. Don't wanna be just another body, laying around for - CSU to find."

For Kate to find. For Ryan or Esposito to find. His throat was suddenly thick with sobs that didn't quite get out.

One of the minions snorted. "Top dog doesn't have time for you," he snapped. "Said we could play with our toy before we threw it in the trash."

"Toy might be - worth something," Castle said. "You don't know what I might be carrying around in my head."

"Actually, we do," said another minion. Two of them were squatting on the pavement just out of Castle's reach - where he might have reached, if his arms weren't duct-taped to his sides. "Jenkins says they dug around in there. For days. Messed with your head something awful."

"Yeah, I heard," said Castle. "Too bad about Jenkins, huh? I hear Esposito took him out, while I was busy getting knocked on the head and kidnapped. Again."

"Gentlemen," said a low voice from behind Castle. He tried to look over his shoulder, but his barely operating peripheral vision couldn't make out more than a shadow among shadows in the darkened building.

"Would you excuse us, please," said the voice. "I'm armed, as is my companion, and I don't think Mr. Castle is in any condition to launch an attack."

"We'll just be out in the alley," said Minion #2, and the two duly departed.

"Here to gloat?" Castle grunted as he tried to roll over and was painfully reminded that the arm on the side he was rolling toward was, most likely, broken. "Maybe a monologue? Or did you find the balls to deliver the final bullet yourself?"

"None of the above, Mr. Castle. My hands are, and will remain, clean. I've never seen the inside of a prison, and I intend to keep it that way."

"Ah, let your thugs take the rap and do the time. I get it. Not very sportsmanlike."

"And not any business of yours, either." The voice came a little closer; the figure remained indistinct. "I came only to ask a question: did you know, the summer you were in our care, what our final plan was for you?"

"Your care? I'd laugh, if it didn't hurt like a son of a bitch. Well, you'll have to live without my answer, whoever you are."

"Mr. Castle, I am the entity you have been referring to as 'LokSat'."

Castle could hardly believe it. In fact, he didn't believe it. After all this time, all the dead or live leads, the lives lost, had he actually come (almost) face-to-face with their nemesis?

"Don't believe you," he retorted.

"I don't expect you to. My colleague here has something to show you that may convince you."

Footsteps approached, and a booted foot came to rest heavily on Castle's shoulder, preventing him from turning his head, or indeed moving at all. A gloved hand descended to brandish before his eyes a piece of paper with an official stamp on it. A moment later, someone shone a flashlight on the document and Castle was able to make out the content.

It was the memo that had seemingly set off the events that had claimed the lives of the AG team and so many others. The memo discovered by Vikram Singh and pored over by Castle, Beckett, Hayley, and the chosen few who had followed Kate on her hunt for LokSat. The memo, unredacted, short and to the point, which incriminated Bracken in the drug trade beyond a shadow of doubt, proved that Bracken's partner had been active long before the memo was written, and yet stopped short of naming that partner.

Castle closed his eyes and the boot was removed, footsteps moved away.

"Unfortunately, you'll be taking the image of that memo with you to your grave," said the voice. "These few moments of enlightenment will be your last."

"Does the executioner allow any last requests?" Castle strained to keep his voice level.

"As usual, it depends upon the request."

"Of course. Let's see, I don't smoke, and I don't suppose one can get a decent latte in this part of town - whatever town this is - all right, this is my request. You're going to have me shot to death, right?"

"That's my plan."

"Would you mind not shooting me in the head? Through the heart would get the job done."

"Why does it matter to you?" asked the voice. "Dead is dead."

"Yeah, but someone's going to have to I.D. my body and I'd just as soon not put my mother and my daughter through the sight of my mutilated face."

"What about Kate Beckett? Aren't you worried about her reaction?"

Castle refused to answer. If Kate was still alive, he thought, he didn't care to discuss her with this fiend. After a moment, the fiend went on.

"Once more, I ask: what did you think was going to happen to you, once Mr. Jenkins made those convenient 'adjustments' to your memory?"

"Well, if I were writing it… you'd have gotten into my head, extracted any knowledge you wanted about anything I know, including Beckett, the LokSat investigation, and various other things I won't name, in case you *didn't* find them…" Castle had thought this out hundreds of times, but he was dragging out the conversation and praying for a flash of inspiration to save himself.

"You wouldn't have any use for me after that," he said, "so you set up the fake campsite to make it look like I was hiding out, running from my wedding. Convenient psychotic break, maybe. Followed by...let's see. Oh, I know! I'd get booked on a cruise like the one that Acosta worked on, and vanish while in transit. Maybe lost at sea...maybe eaten by a shark while scuba-diving. Murdered by pirates sounds good. You couldn't allow a body to be found, though, so lost at sea would probably be your best shot."

"Speaking of shots," said the voice, "turn him on his side. His right side."

Castle screamed, once, when he was rolled to lie on his broken right arm, then panted as he took up the narrative again.

"But then I not only managed to escape, in the very boat you were going to use as part of the story, but woke up relatively unscathed in a secure hospital room. And, as far as you knew, completely unaware of what had happened to me after the car crash."

"So you did remember?"

"Not at the time," Castle admitted. "But once I did, well, I'm a writer. I wrote every sordid, seemingly insignificant detail down, handwrote it, three copies of it, and delivered it to three places which I will never in a thousand years reveal to you."

"I don't believe you."

"You don't have to," Castle replied. "After I'm dead, that account will come to light, to be analyzed by the best minds in the forensic and investigative world, and then you'll be hard put to stay out of the spotlight."

"I have a lot of practice." The voice came ever so slightly closer. "Even your father, the renegade, doesn't know who I am. I sent him on a wild goose chase, aided and abetted by Vikram Singh, who is highly motivated to follow my orders."

"Blackmail? Seems to fit your character. Guess I'll never hear the rest of that story."

"I want a through-and-through," said the voice, obviously to his armed companion. "Close range, through his heart, and we recover the shell casing and the bullet itself. Move him closer to the wall."

"Don't tell me my job," muttered the companion, male, indeterminate age and accent; then Castle was seized by the ankle and dragged about ten feet, to face a cement wall, lying once more on his right side. Even with the dim lighting he could make out two shadows behind him - his interrogator and his executioner.

The sound of a rubber glove being pulled on - presumably to avoid bloody fingerprints or gunshot residue on one's clothes, always thinking like a gumshoe, Castle - made him shiver, but he refused to meet death with his eyes closed, so he was still gazing at the shadows on the wall when a third shadow grew slowly at the edge of his vision -

and a fourth -

one of the first two shadows knelt down, presumably to deliver the shot to Castle's heart -

"Kate," he whispered. "I love you, Kate. Always." -

Through the broken window above him a voice shouted, "Drop it! Drop it, NOW!" followed by the barrel of a gun - two guns, two voices - and the figure kneeling behind him fired, not into Castle's body, but toward the window, breaking more glass, which fell on top of him -

The two shadows seemed to be struggling, another shot exploded behind him and now it was a body that collapsed on his legs - Castle managed to look down and saw the face of an older man, sour expression, grimacing in death. Not anyone he knew.

Then there were hands on him, more shouting, someone turning him on his back, more shots fired (sounding further away), someone removing the dead man from Castle's person.

"Hold still."

He stopped trying to look in all directions at once and focused up, toward the voice commanding him, at the face of the person now intent on sawing through the duct tape with a knife, and he never, ever wanted to look away again.

"Kate," he whispered.

Her smile flashed, but her hands did not falter. Once the tape on his left side was cut through, he managed to move his arm enough to gauge that it wasn't broken, and he reached for her.

"Kate. Tell me."

She shook her head and moved to cut the tape on his other arm, but he caught hold of her wrist and said, "That one's broken. Best to leave it wrapped, for now."

"Are you bleeding anywhere?" Her hands were on him, searching for further injury.

"Just my face," he reported. "And there's a cut on the back of my head, when I hit the floor, when I was offloaded here."

She slid a hand carefully under his head and grimaced when she found the blood-matted hair there.

"Stitches, maybe," she murmured.

"Are you bleeding anywhere?" he demanded.

"Amazingly, no," she said, sitting back on her heels. "Not unscathed, however."

She pulled her hair back, away from her face, and he saw the bruises already forming, from her cheekbone down under her jaw.

"I'd offer to shoot the one who did that, but I'm guessing he or she is already taken care of?"

"Yeah," said Kate. "What did you do? Swallow the tracker?"

"And boy, did it burn going down. Remind me to write the company and pitch them a few new flavors."

"Well, it worked. Agent Stack thought we were crazy when I suggested it, but Ryan and Espo backed me up and well, here we are."

They grinned at each other. Then Castle's grin faded and he asked, "Where's the other man?"

"Which one? We collared half a dozen at this location alone. Not including the dead man who landed on you - he's the ghost I saw on surveillance leaving Alison Hyde's hotel, months ago."

"He was here with another man," Castle said. "A man who said he was LokSat."

"You didn't see him?"

"Didn't see either of them. He spoke very quietly; I couldn't tell how old he was, or how tall - " Castle broke off, frustrated. "He was standing next to the dead guy, who was about to put a bullet through my heart, giving him orders."

"Next to - " Kate looked around. "I didn't see anyone else, before the shooter fell. Wait - "

"Don't leave me," said Castle, suddenly panicking.

Kate was waving an arm at someone, and when she got their attention she directed them toward a corner of the loading dock at the far end of the room. She held onto Castle's hand as they waited, and eventually a uniformed officer came over to them to report.

"Male, late thirties, brown hair, brown eyes, no I.D., no jewelry. Looks like he was shot at close range and then bled out as he tried to flee the scene."

Kate went pale. "Send Esposito over here, will you?"

When Esposito arrived, looking genuinely glad to see Castle, Kate moved away, presumably to examine the dead man, and the EMTs moved in to stabilize Castle's arm and check him over.

"Wait," said Castle as they were about to load him, strapped onto the gurney, into the ambulance. "Wait - I can't go anywhere without her."

"Well, you're stuck with me, bro," Espo told him. "She said that once we found you, one of us had to stick with you. Me, Ryan, L.T., or herself. And she outranks all of us, so."

"Damn straight," said herself as she came back from her reconnaissance. Lowering her voice, she asked the EMTs to give them a minute, then said to Espo and Castle, "Caleb Brown. And he had this on him."

She held up an evidence bag with a single sheet of paper on it - the paper Castle had been shown just before his intended execution.

"That's - he's LokSat?" Castle whispered.

"Was," said Kate, with unapologetic satisfaction. "Was. There's a long way to go to wrap this up, but with everything else we found? This was the man we've been looking for."

"And I'm glad," said a woman's voice near Castle's feet. "I need the rest."

"Rita," said Espo, and when had they been introduced? thought Castle. "Thanks for the intel. And the backup."

"You're very welcome," said Rita. She turned to Kate with a pointed glare and added, "As for you, dear, I hope you'll take my advice to heart this time. Go home to your handsome - well, soon-to-be-handsome - husband. The witch is dead. Go live happily ever."

"In the merry old land of Oz?" Castle couldn't help putting in. He got identical eyerolls from Kate and from Rita and decided that all was indeed well.

"Didn't think I'd end up riding into the sunset in an ambulance," he muttered as he, Kate, and the emergency tech got situated in the back of the vehicle and shut the doors.

"Or even the sunrise," said Kate lightly. "Which is still about four hours away."

She leaned over to kiss him and whispered, "I'm just glad we get to watch the sun rise together, Castle."

"Together," he murmured. "I like the sound of that."

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ _I have no inside information as to how this season will end. This is purely my take on how the LokSat case might come to an end. Thanks for reading._


End file.
